John Harstad's '172 Hours on the Moon' is a dark and creepy adventure for teens

Johan Harstad's imaginative new novel sends three teenagers 238,000 miles into space.

It's 2019, the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind, and NASA needs money. Taking a cue from reality television, the government hatches a global lottery to select three adolescents to spend a week on the moon.

Readers of "The Hunger Games" know what comes from winning a government lottery.

Norwegian rebel Mia Nomeland is furious that her meddling parents put her name in the drawing: "What would I do up there? Look at rocks with two other nerds and wave at the camera for a week?"

But Antoine Devereux, a 16-year-old Parisian, has just been dumped by his girlfriend and is thrilled to partake in the adventure. Midori Yoshida hopes to escape domestic monotony in Japan and find post-space fabulousness in New York City.

"172 Hours on the Moon" is a well-crafted physical object, peppered with vintage photographs of Apollo moon shots. Like Stieg Larsson, another Scandinavian, Harstad knows how to tuck in a nasty shock.

The narrative zips past training and detours safely around the confusing, alphabet-soup of NASA-speak. In no time, Mia, Midori, Antoine and five adult astronauts are landing on the Sea of Tranquility. The crew enters a lab building kept secret since 1972, using machinery that still works. I can hear teen readers scoffing, "yeah, right."

Evil lurks in the dark lab. Things quickly go wrong -- power outages, folks who wander off and are violently dispatched in the slasher-movie manner. This is stock stuff.

But the waiting menace isn't for the squeamish. Sure, this novel has plenty of logic-defying scenes, but they don't stall the escalating tension. Mia, who on Earth wore Italian combat boots in her rock band Rogue Squadron, emerges as a resourceful heroine.

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